those who cannot be qualified for the work and office; to dissuade from it such as, for whatever reason, do not give promise of future usefulness. It is her privilege, though caution is required in her use of it. The Church cannot afford-for the sake of Christ, her founder and head, for the sake of a sinking world-cannot afford to have the work to be done neglected through incapacity, or slighted through ignorance and inability due to the want of proper discipline. There may be glaring mental disqualifications as well as moral; there may be want of mental balance or ballast, which, though not culpable, is not less objectionable, in some respects, than want of moral. Where this is seen, it is the Church's privilege, it is her prerogative to dissuade. 3. It is the privilege of the Church to encourage such as seem likely to be useful in seeking the ministry. It is her privilege to induce them to seek it. Such encouragement may do much toward putting them on such search, or strengthen in the purpose to which they have already come. But how to encourage them? She cannot offer them worldly emolument; she cannot promise them wealth; she cannot assure them a life of ease. She can pledge them, if they are faithful, the world's neglect; she can welcome them to a life of hardship and toil; she can promise them, in many instances, broken constitutions and early graves. At the same time, she can cheer them with thoughts of future usefulness; she can pledge them her prayers; she can assure them of her unremitted solicitude for them; she can promise them that, their armour on, and themselves introduced to the field of public conflict, she will accompany them into the thickest of the fight, and uphold their hands until the going down of their sun. Oh, she can point them away from earth to heaven, and with uplifted finger fasten their longing eyes on celestial crowns and thrones, and assure them, in the name of God, that "they that turn many to righteousness" shall shine "as the stars, forever and ever." And greatly will such pledge, such promise, such assurance, strengthen them for their labours; greatly, greatly will they beguile the weariness of their way. 4. Finally, it is the Church's privilege to aid such as she believes qualified by grace and giving promise of usefulness, in their preparations for the ministry. It is her privilege not only to encourage but to aid; or to encourage, by aiding them when necessary. Such necessity exists in the case of many. Many there are of sound mind, of earnest desire, of undoubted piety; not a few, of brilliant parts and eminently promising, who require such aid. They struggle with poverty, they labour with the embarrassments incident to indigence, they are poor scholars; and when we so designate them, we have gone far enough to awaken the sympathy of those who know, by observation or experience, what it is to be a poor scholar. May no youth who now hears my voice ever learn from experience what it is to be this! may the child of no parent here ever know from experience the pain of desire of knowledge in order to usefulness, in the 1 absence of means of obtaining it! may none know what it is to struggle, and yet be restrained, in pursuit of education! may none know what it is to have the attention divided and the mind distracted, between anxiety to learn and solicitude in providing for their daily subsistence! may none ever know what it is to have the countenance not more "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought" than with perpetual solicitude as to the means of temporal support! may they never know the discouragement, the perplexity, the sinking of the heart, the almost despair of ever reaching that goal on which their eyes and hopes are fixed! Too many already know it; and some who have known it, know it no more. For, alas unable to endure the pressure, their constitutions undermined, disconsolate and sad, they have gone down, broken-hearted and prematurely, to the cloistered stillness of the grave. They, the young and strong, who cherished By the roadside fell and perished, They, the holy ones and weakly, Spake with us on earth no more! A sigh, my hearers'; at least one sigh over their memory! A tear, at least one, upon their humble sepulchre ! And with a sigh and a tear for them, let there be proffers of aid to the living! They demand it of us. Near four hundred voices of pious but indigent youths struggling to enter the ministry in our Church alone, to become her standard-bearers, to take the place of the fathers as one by one they depart on their celestial journey, to be her teachers, to fill with power the pulpits of our cities, to sweep the prairies and penetrate the forests on their errand of mercy, to stand on our Pacific coast, their backs turned toward us, facing the Orient on its other side; to take their lives in their hands, going among the heathen and the Moslem and Jews-near four hundred voices, some with greater importunity, some with less, unite in imploring aid. So many, at different stages of progress toward the Christian pulpit, look for assistance to that Board which is but the Church's servant, and which, if the Church wills, becomes to them as a beneficent, protecting angel. To aid these is the Church's privilege is her duty. She may not stand idly by and watch their struggles and devotion, and extend no helping hand. If she remember the injunctions of her divine Master, she will not be indifferent to their call. Let us, therefore, avail ourselves of the opportunity which comes in its annual round to-day; let us offer to these disciples in the name of a disciple, even if it be no more than the cup of water which refreshes. Whether our offering be great or small, if graduated by our ability, it will be accepted, and recorded on high. Our own hearts will approve us; and God and Christ and angels, and the spirits of just men made perfect, will smile on us. Our probation will be happier for our charity; and when it is over-if for Christ's sake we have done it when the drama of time is closing, when the last tempest beats wildly on this creation, and the proud and the unfeeling and selfish go down in one fearful wreck, we shall find ourselves secure, on "that sea of glass like unto crystal," seen by the saintly exile spreading before the throne of God and the Lamb. ARTICLE XIII. PREACHING THE GOSPEL. BY THE REV. JAMES WOOD, D.D., ONE OF THE SECRETARIES OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION. MANY able productions have been written to aid young ministers and candidates for the ministry, in the great and responsible work of preaching the Gospel. The "Reformed Pastor," by the Rev. Richard Baxter, has been long known and appreciated by theological students. Like good old wine, it has lost none of its virtue by the lapse of years. A modern work of much value has also been for some time before the public, entitled "An Earnest Ministry, the Want of the Times," by the Rev. John Angell James. Its perusal makes one almost imagine that the sainted Baxter has arisen from the dead; like the spirit of ancient Elijah, reappearing in the person of John the Baptist. A venerable American divine, the Rev. Gardner Spring, D.D., has likewise published a volume on this subject, entitled "The Power of the Pulpit," which is a book of superior excellence, both in style and practical value. Besides these, other useful essays have been produced, which bear more or less on the work of the Gospel ministry. One or more of the best treatises on this subject ought to be in the hands of every candidate for the sacred office, and be read at short intervals with serious and prayerful attention. Preaching the Gospel was understood by the Apostles as being identical with preaching Christ. This we infer from the manner in which they executed his last commission, "Go ye into all the world. and preach the Gospel to every creature. Peter's memorable sermon on the Day of Pentecost, consisted chiefly in an historical proof from the Old Testament Scriptures, that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah, and a solemn call upon his auditors to repent of their sins and trust in Christ as their Saviour. This model discourse was doubtless heard by Philip, and will enable us to understand what is meant by the statement that "Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and preached Christ unto them;" and again, by what is recorded of him when he met the Ethiopian eunuch reading a passage in the Prophecy of Isaiah, viz., that "he began at the same Scripture and preached unto him Jesus." He doubtless announced to the eunuch the advent of Christ as our Redeemer, according to that remarkable prophecy which he was then reading, and exhorted him to receive the glad tidings with a devout and believing heart. The apostles, however, did more than simply announce our Saviour's advent. Paul was no sooner converted and called to the apostleship, than "straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God." Again, in Thessalonica, "as his manner was, he went in unto them (the Jews), and three Sabbath days reasoned with them out of the Scriptures, that Christ must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead, and that this Jesus whom I preach unto you is Christ." When Peter preached in the house of Cornelius, he said, that "God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ, he is Lord of all." "And we are witnesses of all things which he did, both in the land of the Jews, and in Jerusalem; whom they slew and hanged on a tree: Him, God raised up the third day, and showed Him openly.' "And He commanded us to preach unto the people, and to testify that it is He which was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead." In these passages, we perceive that the single fact that Christ was the Messiah, when expanded so as to comprehend what was really involved in it, embraced his supreme divinity, his incarnation and crucifixion, his resurrection and ascension into heaven, and his appointment to be the Judge of the world. By reading the apostolic epistles, we find also that several other truths are involved in it. Paul determined "not to know anything" in his preaching, "save Jesus Christ and him crucified;" and yet he distinctly taught and argued the nature and obligations of the divine law, the fall of man, the total corruption and depravity of his moral nature, his entire impotence to recover himself from his ruined state, and the necessity of his regeneration through the agency of the Holy Spirit. He also inculcated a holy life, and particularized various practical duties, thereby showing that by determining to know nothing save Christ and him crucified, he only meant that he would preach nothing except what was necessary to a lucid and full presentation of those central truths, or what was clearly deducible from them. In harmony with this general view of the case, we shall endeavour: I. To analyze this noble and divine theme, for the purpose of presenting the principal topics which must be discussed in preaching the Gospel. 1. First of all we must preach Christ himself, both in his personal character, and in his official work; without which, either expressed or clearly implied, a discourse cannot be properly called a Gospel sermon. He must be exhibited in the glory of his divine nature and perfections; in his wonderful love and condescension; in his humiliation and sufferings; in his atonement and intercession. These doctrines are fundamental. To pervert or even obscure any one of them, is like eclipsing the rays of the sun. Those preachers who, in Peter's time, "denied the Lord that bought them," are called by him "false teachers," who "privily brought in damnable heresies, and brought upon themselves swift destruction." By their denial of the Lord, the apostle meant, their denial of his true and proper divinity, or of his assumption of a real human nature, and his vicarious and atoning death; either of which errors was fatal to the soul's salvation. In preaching Christ, we must hold him up with prominence and frequency. It was a high though undesigned eulogy paid by a fashionable young lady, to an evangelical and successful preacher in one of our large cities, some twenty-five years ago, that "she had become weary in attending upon his ministry, because he preached little else from one Sabbath to another but Jesus, Jesus, Jesus." His thronged audiences and his large and frequent accessions to the communion of the Church, showed that the name of Jesus was music to many ears if not to hers; and that its sweet and subduing melody entered their hearts as well as their ears. "We preach Christ crucified," says Paul, "unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God." The great thoughts embodied in the name of Jesus are adapted to the wants of our fallen nature; and God honours them as the means of converting sinners wherever the Gospel is preached, both in Christian and heathen countries. The Moravian missionaries laboured five years in Greenland, before they saw "any trace of abiding impression from the truths they had urged." They had not neglected to state the fact, that Christ had come into the world to save sinners, &c., but their chief aim had been to prepare the way, as they thought, for the introduction of the Gospel, by instructing the natives in those elementary principles which lie at the foundation of all religion, natural and revealed; those which relate to God as our creator, preserver, moral governor, and final judge, with the duties which devolve upon us as his creatures. The importance of these truths is apparent to all, and yet they were listened to by their hearers with marked indifference. But when the missionary read to them the history of our Saviour's conflict on the Mount of Olives, and of his bloody sweat and dying agony in Gethsemane and on Calvary, the Lord opened the heart of one of them, and he said, with a loud, earnest, and affecting voice, "How was that? Tell us once more; for I would fain be saved too." The missionary then gave the Greenlanders who were present a general account of our Saviour's whole life and death, and of his sufferings for our salvation, which caused such an agitation and stir among them as had never been seen before; verifying the apostle's declaration, "that the Gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.' 2. Preaching the Gospel involves an exposition of the divine law. Christ affirms that he "came not to destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfil." The Apostle Paul says, "Do we make void the law |